The internet was created by BBN and Proteon as a Redundancy problem solver for DARPANET. Unix was developed with no knowledge of this. The ATEX messaging system was developed in a garage in 1980 before e-mail.
1980. Before so many voters were even born.
God help us.
And...private digital communication started with tinkers in their basements, in the middle of the night, phoning someone a few blocks away and connection their then very basic machines together.
Eventually it grew so that many tinkers would connect at prearranged times. Messages could be “sent” coast to coast but it was slower than snail mail.
Then came “nets” like fidonet that could do a primitive email like pine. When communication became faster and reliable bbs and “chat” rooms evolved.
Then came commercial services like compuserve, prodigy, genie and the like.
It was a wonderful time!